Would no religion really benefit anyone?

Sure there are religious wackos, terrorists, god driven mass murderers, and delusional religious freaks.  I'm not talking about those.  I'm talking about the everyday citizen of any given country who happens to believe in their god.  They have some faith, some hope that believing in this god will benefit them later, regardless of whether or not this is a valid belief.  Like believing that "if you're good this year, Santa will bring you more presents" or "if you tip the waitress you'll have good karma brought to you" or "if you work really hard for the company, you'll have an excellent retirement package  and won't get laid off."  In other words, hope is the driving factor behind many of our actions.  To eliminate religion would eliminate people's day to day hope. 

Even if their beleifs are "scienticifally incorrect," think of all the people in the US that cling to God to get through their own lives.  Look at black churches that have joyous singing and dancing.  The Bible typically refers to its followers as sheep, and that's what they are.  But isn't it better than being convinced that there is no god?  To actually KNOW or have it forced upon them that no god can possibly exist?  You'd have people with no hope, purpose, or reason to differentiate right from wrong.  Sure, some people can act morally on their own, but others can't.  They need a reason to not steal or kill or cheat on their wives, and with no moral or spiritual "penalty," what do people have to lose?  Do you really want a completely atheist society?  Religion makes an excellent behavior control system, just like government laws, accepted behaviors, popular beliefs and opinions, TV advertisements, and political statements from our current political leader.  The validity of these systems may be wrong in some instances, but at least they offer some kind of order.   

>>38
The word is "atheism."  Religious/theistic beliefs = theism.  A- is a prefix that negates the following word. A-theism = lack of religious/theistic beliefs. Here ya go:

ttp://www.alabamaatheist.org/awareness/questions/agnostic.htm

>>37
Hey, you're the one tripping over your feet to apologize for and defend every kind of ridiculous superstition, not me. You're the one who invoked Argument from Adverse Consequences, not me.

>>40
In a scientific context it is improper to use terms like "belief." I tentatively accept a certain hypothesis pending empirical disproof, I do not claim to "believe in" it. And yes, some of the claims of various religions, particularly Christianity, are scientific in nature and fall into the realm that can be empirically tested--such as the Earth being only six thousand years old, a vast world-deluging flood only five thousand years ago, all land-dwelling life on Earth today being descended from a tiny handful of specimens preserved during this flood on a wooden boat, and so on. These claims are empirically testable, and have been found wanting. They are lies and deserve the same treatment as any other lies.

>>41

a narrow way to live in that much exists that is yet to be proven

>>41
I don't think this guy's definition of Atheist is the proper one.
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=atheism
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=atheism
http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/atheism?view=uk

The question is whether atheism refers to "no belief in god" or "belief in no god"... based on my links, which were not random people's personal websites (one with multiple spelling and grammar errors - not neccesarily a good way to demonstrate a mastery of the English language, which is what is being discussed), it seems it means "belief in no god".  Remember, etymology does not a good argument make.  Just because the "hippo" in "hippopotamus" means "horse" in Greek doesn not necessarily mean that I should try and ride one.

Some of you may think that I'm being asinine or anal about this, and that it's just semantics.  However, semantics is everything.  If we don't agree on our terms to the best of our ability we're just going to be going around in circles.

>>42
More is not always better.  Should I make up detailed alien races for all the other planets and the solar system just so I can believe in more things and have a "less narrow" life?  Is that really what you are suggesting?

>>44
no, but you can look at current proven fact combined with current theory and make a resonable guess as to what will be ultimately discovered
ofcourse you would never impose your guess on anyone else, the way organized religion does

origin is what everyone is guessing at.. how can all this have always existed, something must come into being before existing.
if people are honest with themselves, they must reconcile this issue somehow... the answer must be personal not pre-packaged

"make a reasonable guess" != pulling lint out of your navel and presenting it as pearls of wisdom

We are living in an age of miracles, of marvels.  The sum total of all human knowledge now doubles every two years.  Science is making tremendous strides forward in every field.  Isn't this enough for you?  And aren't you content to withhold judgement on matters of origin until there is sufficient data to have an informed opinion?

what we know of the physical universe is too mathematically beautiful to be accidental.. it reeks of intelligence

"However, if we do discover a complete theory... we would know the mind of God" -- Steven Hawking

unified theory, a complete understanding of the physical universe is what we expect will be ultimately discovered... hope we get there soon

"Too beautiful to be accidental?"  That's not exactly a compelling argument.

>>36

Atheism is irrational because there is no proof that God either exists or does not. Agnosticism is the rational choice here.

"Satanists are as ridiculous as Christians, and I have the same contempt for them."

Thank God for that religious freedom thingie, heh?

"Stalin et al opposed the church because they saw it as a timesucking, brainwasting threat to Lenine's great plan to give every russian 2 spanish Flamingo dancers etc etc"

You completely missed the point, which is that Lenine, Stalin, etc, were atheists "wackos," meaning atheism is not the be all, end all, solution to the world's problems.

And "The Man Who Loved Children" is an autobiographical work by Christina Stead (one of the greatest australian writers of her time, respect her authority yadda yadda) about her own dysfunctional family. If you didn't read the book (I don't expect you too, it's kinda annoying at parts), at least read the preview I linked to.



Anyways, who cares. :P

>>48
what we know of the physical universe is too mathematically beautiful to be accidental.. it reeks of intelligence

from fractals to particle supersymmetry, too mathematically elegant.. reeks of intelligence, overwhelmingly coincidental, statistically improbable, logically curious

and no one is here to compel you.

belief is personal, organized religion is folly

it wants to be solved, the human transtemporal scientific drive for knowledge is hard to explain in other terms

the pieces have all been there infront of us since the beginning, our pace of understanding has been quickening exponentially.. the learning curve is steepening

we will know soon

>>50
You're going at it the wrong way... let's look at a soldier who has survived for 20 years in lots of intense battles who is not more skilled than any other average soldier.  However, he has had over 30 unbelievably coincidental events that have allowed him to always survive.  Under your logic, you start with the end result - a veteran soldier - and work backwards, saying all his narrow scrapes must have been miracles, god is on his side, whatever.  However, this is kind of backwards.  The thing is, ANY soldier that has survived that long MUST have had a lot of coincidences in order for him not to die.  It's the same for any functioning system - BECAUSE we live in a universe with existence, it has to be perfect & beautiful and work flawlessly... otherwise, it would have deteriorated by now and we wouldn't be here to discuss it.

"the pieces have all been there infront of us since the beginning, our pace of understanding has been quickening exponentially.. the learning curve is steepening

we will know soon"

Well, if history repeats itself, then our doom is imminent. And it won't be just the fall of Rome, or of the Mayas, it might be of the whole world, thanks to globalization.

I'm not worried about global warming though; even if it's a fact, the world's scientists will most likely reach a solution before it's too late, for mankind anyways. What I'm more worried is that we're driving with the pedal to the metal and we don't even know if there's a light at the end of the tunnel or just a dead end.



Wait, what the hell am I talking about? It's so vague that it could mean just about anything. I guess I don't have a very deep oppinion about whatever, I can't remember, oh look a shiny thing hmm pretty, oh and I guess I just wrote something very shallow about humanity too. I need sleep wooooo pretty lights, if you look at soap bubbles when you bath you can see yourself naked repeated thousands of times, distorted.


 Holy Monk of Banana Monkeys, what the hell?

>>49
There's no proof that invisible pink unicorns exist, or don't.  Shall I refrain from laughing my guts out when people tell me with a straight face that I must propitate the invisible pink unicorns or face eternal punishment?

I tell you what, if everybody acted christianly towards another itd be a great world.

Also, muhammed is right about one thing: females are worthless distractions and should be covered up and left at home. 99.999% percent of anything of worth achieved by humans was achieved by a man.

My utopia would be a cross of iran, some hippie commune and baptist country USA.

I tell you what, if everybody acted christianly towards another itd be a great world.

Also, muhammed is right about one thing: females are worthless distractions and should be covered up and left at home. 99.999% percent of anything of worth achieved by humans was achieved by a man.

My utopia would be a cross of iran, some hippie commune and baptist country USA.

you know whats awesome

doubleposting trolls

>>52
>>It's the same for any functioning system - BECAUSE we live in a universe with existence, it has to be perfect & beautiful and work flawlessly... otherwise, it would have deteriorated by now and we wouldn't be here to discuss it.

all the more reason to suspect it was intelligently designed.. or that perhaps it is intelligence itself

all the knowledge we have amassed has been "learned" by solving various aspects of nature, we are deriving knowledge from the very existence in which we find ourselves. the ultimate knowledge is still located within, it wills us to solve it.. generation after generation.. evolution is but a biological manifestation of the same force

all functioning technological systems we claim mastery of today have been carefully designed, just the system of nature is so immensely complex and elegantly unified in myriad aspects and scales that it simply defies logic to have been accidental

>> god is on his side, whatever.
"god" is a quaint notion, lets just forget that
we are talking about the full spectrum of scientific coincidence not human coincidence of circumstance

"Coincidence" is in the eye of the beholder.  To paraphrase Douglas Adams, should a puddle be astonished that it is exactly the same shape as the depression in the ground in which it lies?

Your astonishment seems to contain the unspoken assumption that the universe could have been anything else but what it is.  There is no empirical evidence to support this.

You are once again digging around in your navel for belly-button lint and presenting it as pearls of wisdom.

>>57
His trolling technique is extremely crude, but the double post may not be his fault. Quite frequently, when I click on "add reply," I get a "connection closed by remote server" error message, but when I reload the page, my reply is there in the thread. Perhaps he got that error message and thought it meant his reply never got posted.

>>59
>anything else but what it is.

things dont just "is" out of nothingness, they come into being. especially 'perfect & beautiful' things.. or a thing so complex and intricate it may always escape complete quantification by even our fully developed perceptions

for a thing to come into being, some force or action must be initiated to bring such a thing into being, this is the empirical view at its core

causation breaks both micro and macro sciences at their terminus
it must be reconciled.

>>should a puddle be astonished that it is exactly the same shape as the depression in the ground in which it lies?

this is too narrow a question. you should be asking how that depression in the ground was created, once you can answer that.. perhaps what created that depression in the ground will become more apparent

then maybe you can stop moping about being just a puddle...


>>You are once again digging around in your navel for belly-button lint and presenting it as pearls of wisdom.

hey, my navel is full of lint tonight! i have to present this somewhere?

mind using a new analogy... i tire of this one

>>61
Argument from personal incredulity? Well, that's a new one. I don't think the universe really cares one way or another about either your opinion or mine, however.

I too am tired of belly button lint. How about presenting something substantive, or even substantial?

>>61
>things dont just "is" out of nothingness,

I don't see how this is an argument for the spiritual.  All this suggests is that either: yes, things DO apparently "is" out of nothingness, or failing that, the universe did not "is" out of nothingness - there was either something "before" it or it was always there.

>>63
I don't see it either. But he seems to really, really want it to be one and perhaps even has some psychological need for it to be one.

Magical thinking and cognitive dissonance in action are ugly to watch, aren't they, kids?

The whole point of science is that when something is unknown, even if it's something that seems really strange, you reserve judgment until more facts are known about it.  Throughout history, natural phenomena (gravity, lightning, creation of the planet, etc) were always thought to be caused by God.  The strange thing is, EVERY SINGLE TIME that the cause has been found it has NEVER, EVER been God.  It's funny that way, isn't it?

The whole point of science is that when something is unknown, even if it's something that seems really strange, you reserve judgment until more facts are known about it.  Throughout history, natural phenomena (gravity, lightning, creation of the planet, etc) were always thought to be caused by God.  The strange thing is, EVERY SINGLE TIME that the cause has been found it has NEVER, EVER been God.  It's funny that way, isn't it?

The whole point of science is that when something is unknown, even if it's something that seems really strange, you reserve judgment until more facts are known about it.  Throughout history, natural phenomena (gravity, lightning, creation of the planet, etc) were always thought to be caused by God.  The strange thing is, EVERY SINGLE TIME that the cause has been found it has NEVER, EVER been God.  It's funny that way, isn't it?

>>62
>I too am tired of belly button lint. How about presenting something substantive, or even substantial?

is this a polite way of trolling for speculation on substantive evidence we will only know a hundred or a thousand years hence

who is the unreasonable one here, kids

read these again and tell me there is not a massive circumstantial case for a pre-loaded intelligently designed universe set into motion at some point, the same force driving  probabilistic causation to have evolved particle systems into biology and most recently consciousness
>>42 >>45 >>47 >>50 >>51 >>58 >>61

"god" is a chaos engine, the endlessly driving force of intelligence is what results from trial and error/theory and experimentation on this chaotic dataset, at the moment we are the furthest biological manifestation of this same intelligent force

all we create in the technological realm is a crude manipulation of what has been pre-loaded into the universe and therefore into us.. the universe's most recent product

collections of individual human consciousness/intelligence working the same problem is akin to distributed computing, using the linguistic mechanism as networking interconnects. this exact mechanism was pre-loaded into the universe when it was infinitely dense and infinitely massive, we just wont see the final result of this mechanism with our own eyes... so in our lifetimes we must make a best guess as to how it will turn out and then form a personal belief about the unanswerable question: why it was turned out

my guess is, it was turned out to solve itself.. for sheer amusement

>about either your opinion or mine, however.
this is honest. as all that can be formed on this topic is theory and opinion based on, and extrapolated from, _current_ fact

>psychological need
yes. anyone honest and in possession of an introspective consciousness requires a reconciliation of these issues.. save the easy excuse of nihilism, at worst.. and agnosticism, at best

clearly this topic is circular, anyone who stipulates base assumptions, builds a circumstantial case and then ventures a guess is easily disproved by lack of _currently_ observable evidence. but all progress starts in theory, you must then follow your logic combined with your intuition, apply it to the spectrum of scientific fact to produce a plausible theory by which to live your life

you may even be right, but you will never know

and from page 1... >>14
>>3 >>13 >>16
>>18 >>20 >>24 >>28 >>37 >>40
i'm going to take a break from this thread, all that can be said from my vantage has been said

have fun reconciling these extrapolative issues for yourself, it is personal.. no one is "right". just be sure to base your assumptions on a thorough understanding of current verifiable scientific fact

>>68 "god" is a chaos engine

Put down the bong.

"god" presents us with a chaos engine? does that give you something to argue now?

have at it..

oh and learn about chaos theory and fractals, and how scientific fact evidences the various states of energy and forces are all permuted fractals of the same

WRYYYYYY

In reply to the very first post, religion serves as a way to teach basic morals to people. This is essential for civilization's survival, but unfortunately, it can also lead to the civilization's end.

I personally believe that a balance of religious and nonreligious peoples is required to make my own ideal society, but sadly, throughout history, both forces of peoples have worked only against each other, rather than with each other.

So much for my idealism.

>>73
Then perhaps there is a better way to teach morality, one unfettered by reliance on silly ghost stories.  ("Do as you're told, or Jesus will get you!  WooooOOOOOooooOOOO!")

"a balance of religious and nonreligious peoples" ... rubbish. Morals, civility, collective production, is all possible with adequate psychological understanding of the _real_ human nature (and not the myths we're currently indoctinated with) and a good dose of Mathematical Game Theory that 'for some strange reason' gives the exact same results, without all that bogus crap about magical sky faires who play favourites according to when/where/how you were born.

>>74

Try to explain to someone why they should love their enemies, help a starving person on the other side of the world, visit murders in jail or in general give a fuck about another person without talking about heaven or hell. Social contract theory only goes so far. Its hard to get the good of christian morality when you eliminate the bad (unprovable things such as god, heaven and hell).

I think that unconditional love for mankind, staying celibate, fasting, etc. are completely not in the interest of an individual, but make you a more advanced person as you are in total control of your body and mind and not a slave to instinct.
If only there was a good way to take god out of the equation.

>>76
Read >>4.

Then consider that "loving their enemies" is strictly a Christian eccentricity, and, frankly, rather irrational.  Nor have I ever seen any point in visiting murderers in jail--if you want to help someone, visit the families of their victims; they deserve the comfort, killers don't.

In any event, you are making the "argument from adverse consequences."  You're saying "but without my favorite pet superstition, people will go fucknuts and kill everybody."  I think people are stronger, smarter, and better than that.  Even if they weren't, truth is truth.

I think it's possible to create a system of morality based on respect for other human beings, one that doesn't carry with it all this neurotic superstitious baggage about gods and demons and evil spirits.

most of this thread is highly enlightened in the scientific aspect and in the eventual concession to the yet unknown
but to >>76
organized religion is a silly thing, any rational person will agree
that TYPE of control is too easy to pervert by the "gatekeepers" of "X" religion
Marx said it best 200+ years ago... "Religion is the opiate of the masses"
Its hard to get the good of christian morality when you eliminate the bad
i disagree, morality is taught. not coaxed out of irrational fear
Its easy to get the good of morality when you teach morality
remove "X" religion out of the picture and it becomes very clear how morality is simply a function of our earliest education

>>77

I think you overestimate people. Most of them are suprisingly stupid. 70% of people are completely unable to comprehend that they should not harm another person because they've signed an unwriten contract to live in a peacful society. The only reason they don't is because god said not to, their parents said not to, and the law says not to.

>>80
I hope you're wrong.  There are societies less religious than the US that are less violent than ours.  Japan comes immediately to mind.  And in the US, some of the most religious people are the most violent.  Any prison is full of people who are only too eager to tell the parole board, "Jesus has changed my life," or "Allah has shown me a new way to live."  The urban poor in the US are far more religious than most of the rest of society, yet tend to be more violent.

I believe that human beings are more intelligent than you give them credit for, and I believe that there is a better way.